


Dissonance I

by thaliaarche



Series: Dissonance [1]
Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Demons, Drabble, Gen, Music, Psychology, Wordplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 06:59:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5281193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thaliaarche/pseuds/thaliaarche
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A theory of demon psychology.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dissonance I

**Author's Note:**

> Tritones are chords that have historically been considered ugly and associated with evil in some Western music. You can play a tritone by playing an octave (e.g.- C and the C above) and then adding in the note exactly half-way in the middle of the chord (F#).
> 
> This is technically a bit of an AU where the psychological term “cognitive dissonance” (first used in the mid-1900’s) is instead much, much older. 
> 
> A quote from Simply Psychology: “Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors. This produces a feeling of discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance etc.”

A tritone is the perfection of an octave slashed in halves— foul, dissonant. The devil’s chord.

When human minds are split by the wrong of the world, they contort, twisting themselves back into a facsimile of wholeness. Yet demons luxuriate in faults and fault lines. They are most alive when cracked by incongruity. They feel only one thing— irony.

(The irony, for instance, of a young boy, the picture of innocence, shrieking bloody murder on an altar. The ironies in a cat’s behavior, always contrary. The irony of a demon from Hell cooing over said cat.)

Demons thrum with cognitive dissonance. In the reverberations, they can sense something like pleasure . . . Or something like pain. There have been demons who have throbbed with dissonance, shuddering, shaking until they came apart at the seams.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the opening of the Dissonance series. It's a hard series to describe (and to write!), as it spans a variety of different genres, ships, and scenarios. However, there is a unifying theme of sorts— every piece presents an unusual, potentially disturbing take on Sebastian.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
